In order to bring their adventure series to the beat ‘em up genre, Microids brought on a new development team. Indie game developer Mr. Nutz Studio took on the take and has helped create Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! for PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. As a series known for being a 3D adventure game series, switching the genre is sort of a bold move. But did this decision turn out to be a good or bad one?

Story

In the year 50 BC, Roman’s have taken over most of the land of Gaul, aside from one small village of indomitable Gauls that still holds out against the invaders. Fronting the fight against the Romans is the strong-willed fighting duo, Asterix & Obelix. However, this village isn’t the only one to want to maintain their homeland against the Romans and so they find themselves doing various missions just to keep everything from falling apart!

Gameplay

When starting the game, you choose from three empty save files which is also where you select the difficulty of the game. Once you have your difficulty and save file location chosen, you simply pick whether you want to play as Asterix or Obelix. If you are playing two players, one player gets each character, but if you are playing solo you will be able to switch between these two characters at any moment in the game.

Both fighters have a main combo you will use when fighting and that is smashing the light attack until they land the hit that makes the enemies fly backward. Pressing the strong attack will have them do a power hit, but this will cost one of your five lightning charges. Of course, those charges are pretty simple to earn back as you get it by just doing a bunch of damage. There are some variations with your attacks, such as jumping and using a light or strong attack.

One of my favorite things to do as Asterix, which helped get me out of moments where i was surrounded, was to grab an enemy and swing them over my head. This take one lightning charge per swing, but it also makes that enemy hit all the others around me. Obelix has a more direct style grab where he beats that one specific one up unless he does the side-to-side smash, but both characters can throw the grabbed enemy across this screen. This will make them hit and knock down all enemies across the screen.

You are able to hit multiple enemies at the same time, just as you can in most beat ‘em ups, as well. Getting them all together and on one side makes fighting the easiest it can get. Note that you are only knocking enemies out in this game, so you will see them again - especially the bosses that you will take down. As you progress through the game, enemies and bosses gradually get tougher to fight by adding more aggression and more attacks to their fighting style. The harder the difficulty, the more damage each hit does and the more enemies there will be.

There are plenty of barrels along the journey in this game though. These barrels are either hiding food or coins. Food will restore one character’s health, which is helpful since it only takes one character to lose all their health for the mission to fail and restart. This goes for both solo and cooperative play, so be aware of the health bars as you have no restarts nor lives - but on that same front you can’t get a game over, it will always just restart the level for you. If you find coins, collect them quickly as they will disappear. Enemies also drop coins as you fight them and these are really just to boost your score that will show at the end of the level.

Visuals and Sounds

Breaking down the aesthetics, level design, dialogue, overall story, and sound effects used can be described as simple as comparing it to Looney Toons. Many of us are familiar with the classic Saturday Morning Cartoons that would play and on there we would watch Cartoon Network show various cartoons. This game looks and sounds like it could have been a video game adaptation of a cartoon from Cartoon Network. Even the fighting was a prime definition of kid-friendly violence.

Replayability

With the different difficulties and cooperative play options alone, there is definitely some replayability to this game. Plus, once you beat the game the first time you unlock Freeplay mode.

What Could Be Better

Making enemies reappear over and over is a good way to show that we aren’t killing anybody in the game, but it does bring about the feeling of repetitiveness. Fighting the same bosses in every Act just wasn’t a good feeling and made the progression feel rather null. I understand I was constantly fighting Roman camps, Pirate ships, and the like, but you couldn’t come up with various Pirate captains or Roman generals that I could face off against?

The fighting itself felt rather directed and straightforward as well. I’ve been playing beat ‘em up titles since I was younger and even with simplistic controls, there should be the option of mixing up your attacks to get different combo styles. The entire playthrough of this game feels like just smashing the light button and grabbing enemies to knock the others around over and over.

Verdict

Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! is a wonderful title to introduce new players to the beat ‘em up genre! While it isn’t super intricate, it is very friendly on the type of violence it portrays. Along with a softer touch in the main field of the game, the story has a nonsensical and comical take to it that even the names of characters show that they don’t take themselves seriously. Giving players room to explore, various enemy types to fight, and even a variety of enemy attack styles to match the enemy variety is the basics of what this genre provides.